Global Zoom call honours first Stockton & Darlington meeting

TWO centuries after the seeds of the world’s first public railway were sown, in what is now a Darlington kebab shop, an international Zoom call was staged from the town’s Head of Steam museum to discuss the 2025 bicentenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

Darlington mayor Coun Chris McEwan was joined on the April 18 call by railway museum representatives from Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and Ireland.

The session took place 200 years to the afternoon that woollen manufacturer Edward Pease, often dubbed the ‘father of the railways’ met locomotive engineer George Stephenson in the former’s house in Northgate, which in recent times was used as a kebab takeaway and which, as reported in issue 278, was recently acquired by Darlington Borough Council because of its historic value.

At the meeting, Stephenson convinced Pease that steam locomotives and not horses were the future of transport.

The call in April was compered by Chris Lloyd of The Northern Echo and featured a re-enactment of the famous meeting by Julian Cound and Christopher McCann of Darlington Operatic Society.

Taking part were an official from the world’s oldest railway museum, in Nuremburg, the Dutch museum in Utrecht and the chief of staff of the mayor of Colombo in Sri Lanka, where a line to transport tea was built by Britain in 1864.

Coun McEwan said that he wanted to reach out to railway institutions around the world to get them involved in the 2025 bicentenary.

He also cycled from the Head of Steam past surviving features of the ground-breaking railway, including Skerne Bridge and Arnold Road tunnel.

Coun McEwan went on to meet members of the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway who had walked from Stockton to Pease’s house to mark the 200th anniversary of that legendary meeting.